During the last week of March, just in time to recover from the excesses of yet another Independence Day celebration, we embarked on an unprecedented adventure to the wilderness of Etosha. The aim of the operation was to count the number of cranes, especially the blue ones, in and around Etosha but also to try and capture and ring as many chicks as possible. The latter objective had good prospects of success because Wilferd and I had spotted a pair with a teensy chick near Salvadora during the summer wetland count in January.